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We are committed to continuing his tradition by using local and fresh ingredients in our scratch kitchen. Our produce is organic and locally sourced when possible, our seafood is of the highest level of sustainability, our meats are organic, grass-fed, free-range, and raised antibiotic and cruelty free. Hidden away in the beautiful Ojai Valley, the Ranch House is a gourmet restaurant famed for original, award winning cuisine. Despite the restaurant’s expansion and generous contributions from friends, Alan and Helen struggled to maintain the business, and the restaurant closed once again.
The California Ranch
They partitioned off the original dining room and converted this into a tiny bedroom, barely enough space for two beds, a few drawers, and a desk for bookkeeping. Outdoors, the private backyard hosts a seated bar, fire-pit conversation area and seasonal waterfall, as well as a freeform swimming pool and spa flanked by a grassy sundeck. There’s also a detached studio apartment with its own kitchenette and bathroom.
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While May never formally attended architecture school and could not draw well, in his early 20s, undaunted, he began designing and building houses in his hometown of San Diego. He moved to Los Angeles in 1935 during the height of the Great Depression where he began to fuse elements of the Spanish Revival style with Modernism to produce low-slung, horizontally oriented, pitched-roof ranch houses. Their open and relaxed layout emphasized outdoor living, perfect for the casual lifestyle and temperate climate of Southern California. And after World War II, May’s Modern ranch house designs were all the rage and took the country by storm. What May lacked in drawing talent he made up for in brilliant marketing skills.
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Alan and Helen Hooker converted this into a small boarding house in 1949 and served their guests a variety of fresh vegetarian meals, the produce grown in Alan's herb garden. During the 1950s, May, along with colleague Chris Choate, designed prefabricated tract ranch homes which they sold to builders across the US. Many of these prefab tracts like Rancho Estates in Long Beach were popular and resulted in many homes in the tracts being built and sold. Some, particularity those outside of California, were unprofitable and only resulted in the model homes being built. The partnership between May and Choate ended in 1956 with May's departure.
HACIENDAS or ranchos dotted the countryside of southern California by the mid-19th century. These low-slung buildings followed the land’s contours and, at the rear, enclosed a courtyard surrounded by a corridor, or open-air hall. The compound had a water storage tank, a fuel tank, a bomb shelter, and various outbuildings and bunkers. The estate's main gate was designed by Paul Williams, a well-known African-American architect in the Southern California area.
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Of his signature Ranch style, a New York Times article from 1986 quoted the then 77-year-old as saying, “I rebelled against the boxy houses being built…. Experimental House is a simple rectangle in shape with a jaw-dropping 288 square foot open skylight in the center, allowing for incredible natural light. He not only wanted to bring the outdoors in, but also the sunshine in apparently. May’s family of five created different rooms by using movable partitions, en vogue at the time for a customizable and transformational living. The family resided in the home for just two years, while May studied how the massive skylight and functional open plan worked out for his family, and for future residents of the home.
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Just as reluctant to serve wine, they started to allow customers to bring their own wine and charged a corkage fee of 25 cents per bottle. Customers would chill their wine in the small brook in the Ranch House garden. Photos are fairly scarce, but on-line listings show a living room anchored by a corner fireplace sporting a marble surround, along with a spacious dining room/workspace that sits adjacent to a kitchen outfitted with newer stainless appliances. A hallway leads to the bedrooms, which include a primary suite boasting a private balcony and spa-inspired bath. The Ranch House offers a prix fixe menu, with the option of a 3 or 5 course dining experience at two modest prices.
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An iconic Cliff May mid-century ranch home with its best years to come. American tastes in architecture began to change in the late 1960s, a move away from Googie and Modernism and ranch houses towards more formal and traditional styles. Very late custom ranch houses of the later 1970s begin to exhibit features of the neo-eclectics, such as dramatically elevated rooflines, grand entryways, and traditional detailing. Neo-eclectic houses also have a significant level of formality in their design, both externally and internally, the exact opposite of the typical ranch-style house.
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Innovative, logical, cost-effective, and to the point, these Cliff May prefab homes were completed in mere days after the concrete slabs were poured. The homes of Rancho Estates are all Contemporary Ranch in style and represent several different models, most of which are L-shaped and have three or four bedrooms. They have shallow gabled roofs, clerestory windows, and board and batten siding, combining sleek Modern lines with rustic accents to epitomize the latest in the Ranch style. All of the houses featured large windows and glass doors that opened onto patios and courtyards paved with grids of aggregate concrete. And Frances O’Leary house (1932) – sold for $9,500 when its designer was only 23.
We’re talking here about a deliberate new style of residential architecture—not the tract houses of a generation later. California architect Cliff May (1909–1989) is credited with the first modern Ranch, built in an Diego in 1932. Consciously interpreting the ranchos of the mid-19th century, May was one of many notable post-Arts and Crafts architects. A prolific designer and promoter, May sold the style that he himself called “the early California ranch house” throughout the West. He spoke not only about the architectural form, but also about the casual, family-oriented culture of the early (Mexican) Californians, whose gallant hospitality was legendary.
He sold designs for about 18,000 ranch homes and over 1,000 custom residences. At the height of their ubiquitous construction in the 1950s and 1960s, May’s Los Angeles ranch houses were continually featured in magazines including House Beautiful, Sunset, and Architectural Digest. By integrating interior components such as skylights and translucent interior walls to harmonize with the natural landscape, he was essentially practicing environmental design before it was a recognized discipline.
Two years later, with the help of a few close friends, Alan was able to build a new restaurant on the half acre of land for sale at the foot of the hill below the old Ranch House. The Ranch House began in one of the first homes in the Ojai Valley in 1875. Alan and Helen Hooker converted this into a boarding house in 1949 after relocating from Columbus, Ohio, where Alan had been managing a bakery.
The Ranch is intimate, yet immersive, and offers active programs with lasting results. Every movement is designed to improve physical performance, restore the mind, and promote longevity. Our luxury retreats in Malibu, CA and Hudson Valley, NY are ideal for solo, couple, or group experiences. A second look at history—and at these functional homes, now with mature landscape in established neighborhoods—is changing the way we see the American Ranch house.
In shorrt, Cliff May shaped California housing in a way few architects or designers have, before or since. And so does Rita Donahoe of Rita Chan Interiors, a Santa Barbara-based designer and founder of Good Ancestor, a design initiative that emphasizes sustainability in home construction and decoration. The 1970s-era Santa Ynez valley 3-bedroom, 3.5-bath ranch house and guest house she transformed for a young Los Angeles couple—on a pocket-sized vineyard—is the stuff dreams are made of. Many millions of these mall houses were built in developments nationwide during the building booms of the 1950s and 1960s. Some will be remodeled and enlarged; others will be treated to mid-century Modern decorating. As you may know, “Mandalay” translates to “Name of a Mountain from a Holy Place” and was Burma’s cultural and religious center of Buddhism, having numerous monasteries and more than 700 pagodas.
